Now that digital switchover is starting to happen to people, the digital channels seem no longer to be trying quite so hard to win our attentions. It wasn't until mid-December that the digital-only channels collectively out-performed the old five of analogue. If one excludes Film4, one finds analogue maintaining its league. Yet Film4's powers seem mainly to have been at Christmas. Before that the contribution had been minimal. If we remove films from the equation, what do we get?


Only one week now where digital was better than analogue, and that was near the start of the quarter when UKTV Yesterday showed A Very British Coup, BBC4 were on with their Age of Glamour season and ITV4 launched Dollhouse. The strong week for television we noticed earlier (WC 31/10) is all the more visible here. Let's have a go at chopping up this analogue supremacy, then:


21st November was the date the ITV showed Star Wars, followed very clearly by The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Attack of the Clones is hiding behind Groundhog Day and Austin Powers on C5 which is composed entirely of films. The end of the Formula One season and a couple of episodes of Sarah Jane watched on the iPlayer rather than on the CBBC repeat (and hence accounted to the original channel: something that will be altered for the 2010 Ration Book) gives rise to the red column poking out at the start of November. Meanwhile, throughout, the menacing colossus that is BBC2 casts its immense shadow over the rest of analogue. 34 of its points this quarter came from the week-daily omnipresence of Strictly Come Dancing - It Takes Two, but that accounted for no more than one point a day and never achieved a whole five points in a week so its effects, while doubtless helpful, are negligible. See for yourself:


See, tis barely a thing at all, though it is clear to see that BBC2 would not loom quite so high in figure 4.6 as it does with Claudia's help. It holds its head above water rather effectively and at least has some programming beyond films.

Figure 4.8 - Channel by channel, TV Programmes versus Film, week by week

Figure 4.9 - Network by network, TV Programmes versus Film, week by week       BBC TV   ITV TV   4TV   5TV

The weekend has been the time to stay in for this quarter, with film being especially high, and The Thick of It helping Saturday to be the best day for television. On then, to the table:

Unsurprisingly, the BBC vastly outperforms the other networks on TV output, while 4TV knocks out the most films. 5TV is almost entirely film and was out-performed on television terms by the digital-only network UKTV. UKTV is the only other network beyond the BBC to have more points from TV than from film. It should be noted that a quarter of the points UKTV scored for television were for original programming (the inevitably a bit rubbish Red Dwarf specials). Ignoring Film4, Channel 4 takes most of the film points, followed closely by ITV1. ITV4, Channel 5 and BBC2 are close behind, with BBC4 also in the same bracket. It should be no surprise to see B1, B2, I1 and C4 among the five best performing channels for television/ C5's standing in that regard is woeful by comparison. Nice also to be able to observe quite clearly that BBC4 remains the second best channel for TV programming.


BBC3 relied on Being Human to rack up any points at the start of the year while Glastonbury and Top Gear set off the summer which was only completed with the assistance of cinema. For six months BBC3 was dead to me. BBC1 had a weak start to the year before kicking in properly in May with Eurovision and the heart of the Formula One season. A slight lull in the summer became a fairly consistent chunk of points by the last quarter of the year. BBC4 also suffered a quite considerable lull at the start of summer: something we've seen before. Most of its success came with the showing of some familiar but nonetheless good Orson Welles films this Christmas. January had The New Avengers and The RKO Story, while April had Newswipe and an evening of archive light-ents presented by female singers, among other aging goodies. The combined forces of radio did well throughout, but it is BBC2 that is the fittest organ in the BBC body, pumping out telly like a Wood Lane technician in the midst of a flood. November was its strongest month, with a mass of documentaries and the mighty Thick of It.


Not a great deal to surprise us here. I2 dropped out for a couple of months but usually managed to deliver some adequate action movie or other. I3 scored nothing over December, which is pretty useless really. There were some 1pt films broadcast, but they'd already used them within the six-month cut-off. These channels will suffer even more next year when 1pt films are wholly or partially expunged from the record (I've not quite decided precisely where to drop the axe). I4 has had some moments of modest grandeur spread across the year. For the most-part that was down to film, but in the last quarter it also gave us Dollhouse: the sort of thing C5 used to be for. There, in the background, is ITV1. The February spike is partly thanks to Peeping Tom but also to an effort to create something of a comedy presence, with the disappointing Al Murray and the flawed Moving Wallpaper joining the stalwart Harry Hill. The more recent column is all Star Wars.


Another far from astonishing chart. M4 dropped out in June, while E4 had five months without any points. M4 was a bit disappointing in light of recent years, but The Shock Doctrine in September was good and helped the channel to its highest score of the year. C4's peak came with You Have Been Watching. Inevitably, the majority of points for 4TV were from Film4.


This deforested graph shows how rubbish 5TV is. Even the main channel had two months of nothing, and the only television points it managed were in the first two days of the year, outside the main tally of the 2009 Ration Book (which started on Saturday 3rd) but included in these monthly performance charts due to the incongruency between the movements of the sun and the moon.

Throughout the year, the five analogue channels of old have had the best of the digital upstarts. At Christmas and New Year, the sheer weight of films landed in digital's favour. There was the massive spike led by Jonathan Meades' Off-Kilter, Classic Grand Prix and Question Time '79 in September, a conjunction of Vertigo and Watership Down in April, and four lesser points piercing the fleshy line of analogue, but they were rarities. Digital TV averaged 14pts a week, analogue 21. Remove film from the equation and we get:


The great digital swindle is laid bare for all to see. For three solid weeks in August, plus one week in June, digital failed to score any points for television output. There were only five weeks where digital outperformed analogue television: The archive fly-on-the-wall doc All In A Day: The City got an airing on B4 at the start of February, Newswipe, The New Avengers, and Snooker played their part in the April spike, the archive compendium of FO promotional clips that was Meet the British was on B4 at the start of June, the September spike we've already taken apart, and in October we had A Very British Coup and the first episode of Dollhouse. In the week commencing 11th July, when digital managed nothing at all, analogue had its best week of the year and Stringer Bell, as already mentioned, got shot. It was also the week Graham Allison challenged me to watch a lot of crap, which helped up the tally somewhat but did nothing to dent digital's abilities. Digital was just shit that week. In fact, it was pretty poor all year, averaging only 4pts per week compared to 9pts for analogue. Let's look at this supposedly so good analogue in a bit more detail:


Yeah, BBC2 takes on the rest of the world again. BBC2 is so big and tough. It scores an average per week of 7, of which 6pts is television programming (digital scored 14pts per week, of which only 4 were for TV). Still, ITV1 can feel lightly smug for having beaten B2 in February.


Very little change on last year. Again the weekends are strongest, especially Saturday where the films are at their best. Radio is still best on Friday and TV on Monday. Tuesday replaces Wednesday as the best day to go to the pub, although, as ever, one can never rule out that this is down to my having been going to the pub on that day.

Enough graphs.


35 radio programmes scored (12 less than last year), with a total of 374 points awarded (34 points more than last year). Winnie the Pooh, The Lady from the Sea and The Changeling all managed 2pts.

294 films scored this year (21 more than last year). 146 scored 1pt (24 more than last year), 79 scored 2pts (3 more than last year), 38 scored 3pts (the same as last year), 17 scored 4pts (10 less than last year), and 12 scored 5pts (2 more than last year): namely A Clockwork Orange, Black Narcissus, Blue Velvet, Citizen Kane, Farewell My Lovely, Jackie Brown, Psycho, Star Wars, The Third Man, 2001, Vertigo and Watership Down (Psycho left the elite group, while Blue Velvet, Farewell..., and The Third Man joined). 546pts were awarded in total, which is rather frighteningly exactly the same score as last year. The most shown scoring films this year were:
Ok. I think, after all that, we're ready for a table:

POSITION (last year)	CHANNEL	TOTAL PTS (change)	AV. PTS/WK	AV. PTS '08 (position)	AV. PTS '07 (position)	AV. PTS '06 (position)	AV. PTS '05 (position)	AV. PTS over 5yrs	PROGRESS
1 (1)	BBC 2	392 (+122)	8	5 (1)	5 (1)	3 (2)	5 (2)	5
2 (3)	Film4	223 (+2)	4	4 (3)	4 (2)	4 (3)	-	4
3 (4)	Radio 4	177 (+27)	3	3 (4)	3 (4)	1 (8)	2 (4)	2
4 (2)	BBC 4	158 (-78)	3	5 (2)	3 (3)	4 (1)	5 (1)	4
5 (5)	BBC 1	120 (-7)	2	2 (5)	2 (5)	2 (4)	2 (5)	2
6 (8)	Channel 4	118 (+13)	2	2 (8)	2 (6)	1 (9)	4 (3)	2
7 (6)	Radio 5L	114 (-12)	2	2 (6)	0 (15)	1 (13)	0 (16)	1
8 (7)	ITV 1	98 (-13)	2	2 (7)	1 (11)	1 (12)	1 (6)	1
9 (12)	ITV 4	79 (+37)	2	1 (12)	1 (10)	1 (10)	0 (17)	1
10 (13)	R5L SE	75 (+42)	1	1 (13)	0 (19)	0 (-)	0 (-)
11 (11)	Five	71 (+11)	1	1 (11)	2 (7)	1 (7)	1 (8)	1
12 (10)	More 4	40 (-21)	1	1 (10)	1 (9)	0 (14)	1 (14)	1
13 (16)	ITV 3	37 (+10)	1	1 (16)	1 (13)	2 (6)	1 (7)	1
14 (19)	E4	22 (+2)	0	0 (19)	0 (20)	0 (15)	0 (15)
15 (18)	ITV 2	22 (-4)	0	0 (18)	1 (12)	0 (16)	0 (13)
16 (9)	BBC 3	17 (-65)	0	2 (9)	1 (8)	2 (5)	1 (10)	1
17 (14)	BBCi	15 (-18)	0	1 (14)	1 (14)	0 (-)	0 (12)
18 (15)	Five USA	15 (-13)	0	1 (15)	0 (=21)	0 (20)	-
19 (21)	CBBC	12 (-4)	0	0 (21)	0 (17)	0 (-)	0 (-)
20 (NE)	Yesterday	12 (+12)	0	0 (-)	0 (-)	0 (-)	0 (-)
21 (17)	Virgin 1	10 (-7)	0	0 (17)	0 (23)	0 (-)	0 (-)
22 (NE)	Dave	8 (+8)	0	0 (-)	0 (-)	-	-
23 (20)	Radio 3	7 (-9)	0	0 (20)	0 (16)	1 (11)	1 (11)
24 (RE)	BBC Plmt.	6 (+6)	0	0 (-)	0 (=24)	0 (=10)	0 (-)
25 (24)	Fiver	3 (-2)	0	0 (24)	0 (=21)	0 (-)	-
26 (NE)	CBeebies	2 (+2)	0	0 (-)	0 (-)	0 (-)	0 (-)
27 (NE)	CITV	1 (+1)	0	0 (-)	0 (-)	0 (-)	0 (-)

 
BBC3 was the only channel to fall to a record low annual average and its lowest ever placing, though BBC4 haemorrhaged more points overall. 4th is BBC4's lowest annual standing to date, with Radio 4 doing the supplanting. Radio 3 had its worst year so far while Sports Extra (or R4LW) had its best. ITV4 was the other advancing channel of note.

And so, to the channel summaries:

BBC One
B1 held its place maintaining five years of consistent form. The channel has not collapsed under the influence of Jay Hunt but rather sauntered along quite pleasantly. There was controversy over Strictly Come Dancing again, not least the replacement of Arlene Phillips by Alesha Dixon. It was right to replace Phillips, not because she was old but because she was not very good. It was wrong to replace her with somebody with less dancing credentials. Still, it helped open up to scrutiny the old sore that is the old-woman cull at the BBC. In partial response we've been granted three new old women newsreaders who will be prominently locked away in the News 24 oubliette. Eurovision turned out fine, and will be even better next year when Norton isn't on painkillers and therefore gets to have a drink. The Formula One coverage was brilliant and that the season itself was good was a lovely bonus. Hole in the Wall jumped the shark pretty effectively. And Doctor Who did a sufficient job of wrapping up the current tenancy despite a woeful start at Easter. In its absence this year Robin Hood did a decent job and just started looking like it could be properly good when it was rather typically axed. Next year, shovel-face will be taking over the Tardis. He's already trashed and immolated it, so the chances of it working properly must be very small indeed (all to the good). Hopefully we'll get a new control room too. Let us pray.

BBC Two
I think it's fair to say that Janice Hadlow (formerly of BBC4) has done pretty well in her first year at B2. We might quibble about the way The Wire got shown; no, we will quibble about the way The Wire got shown. It was bloody stupid showing it post-Newsnight, daily, and back to back. But never mind the delivery, feel the points, eh? An 8pts per week average for the whole year. But how will B2 cope next year, without any Wire to play with? What documentaries can we expect to be filling up the schedule? It will take some sort of miracle to allow B2 to match this year's performance in 2010. I look forward to it.

ITV 1
I1 maintained its average this year despite losing the F1. It did it mainly through film. There was a bit of experimentation at the start of the year, most notably with Moving Wallpaper but the appetite for novelty seemed to wear thin pretty early and the rest of the year has been the usual recipe of Simon Cowell, invertebrate consumption, soap and other trash. Someone called Damon Rochefort has been writing scripts for Coronation Street that have made me appreciate the programme for the first time since Derek Wilton died. He also seems to have had a hand in the curious Britannia High. I must say, his Wikipedia entry seems quite embarrassingly homespun, but I give him a nod all the same and hope that the "raft of new shows" he's working on come out ok. Perhaps he might yet be the ITV's secret weapon. Unlikely. This is a company that continues to employ Piers Morgan. Surely they must've realised by now. Anyway, very soon a new board shall be in place to run the channel, and all sort of exciting experiments will be taking place in the world of regional news. Perhaps the ITV might yet struggle through its current woes and be half decent again. It's certainly not as bad as it used to be.

Channel 4
A decent enough year for C4, though still a good way short of the old days. 2010 is the final year of Big Brother, so expect quite a lot of that. And then I dare say Ofcom will have something up their sleeve to make C4 function without the BB telethon. This year C4 got a good haul of points from You Have Been Watching, a Charlie Brooker review show with comedian guests but alas also a rather wobbly looking quiz stapled to it by some commissioning editor or other. Still, it was bearable; it may bear forth lovely fruits. A number of C4 shows were axed this year: crap like Wife Swap. It's for the best. The question is what will replace all this dead wood?  Christmas was quite depressing on C4 with its rolling wall of Come Dine With Me. Heaven help us if the solution proves to be that and Deal or No Deal 24 hours a day. Let us hope something good is on the way.

Five
C5 managed to tick over this year without losing any ground, despite having got shut of House. It used films to make up for the loss. C5 seems to cope alright with its US imports but it is increasingly indistinct from a number of digital-only channels. The loss of the Christmas Lectures to M4 lost it any credibility as a public service broadcaster, which is probably something that it won't be losing sleep over. More is the pity.

ITV 2
I2 seems to do ok in the Ration Book with its adequate action movies. It will do less well next year when the crapper films are excluded from the tally. The rest of what the channel provides seems to be the very worst of which the ITV is capable.

BBC Three
This was B3's crappest year on record. Repeats of Doctor Who and Doctor Who clip-shows take up the first part of the evening. The middle is taken up by yoof-oriented documentaries, most of which look dreadful and drag down the ones that might have a hint of something about them. And then it's endless repeats of Family Guy (which stopped being funny about a year ago). The odd bit of comedy or drama exists somewhere in that layered cocktail and is let down by the rest of the dreck in that I start to ignore the possibility of it being any good and therefore end up failing to watch even the occasional thing I manage to pick out. The one thing I did end up watching, Being Human is ok, but could be a lot better. It's no Smoking Room, or even Funland or Twisted Tales. I don't know... perhaps if everything were not so blatantly and cynically pointed at a particular demographic I'm sure the place would be a whole lot more bearable.

BBC Four
It's getting worse. It's doing it slowly but it's definitely getting worse. It certainly isn't the wonderful thing it was five years ago. The statistics demonstrate that. Almost all of its programming is now thematically arranged. We had an RKO season which gave us a good documentary series and a couple of rarer films (plus more obvious ones like Citizen Kane which showed in that season on 30th December 2008). We had a Hitchcock season which consisted of a shit documentary and three films, of which only one (Stage Fright) was a comparative rarity. We got some sort of agricultural theme which did at least give us Nuts in May as well as the surprisingly decent doc Mud, Sweat & Tractors. We had evenings dedicated to Nationwide and female singers which both managed to pop out the odd bit of interesting archive. I don't know what season they were running through June and July but B4 didn't score a single point for over seven weeks so it must've been shit. And then the light at the end of that extremely bleak tunnel, Pinter Night, consisted of a couple of non-too-distant Arenas, and three plays, one of which he didn't even write. A Film Noir weekend was made up of what looked like a handful of the BBC's usual noir titles (including the magnificent Farewell My Lovely, the stalwart Build My Gallows High, and a Lady From Shanghai shown only two months previously). A season on Scotland gave us Off-Kilter, which naturally outclassed everything else around it. This was followed by a quick season on the electronic age, and then came perhaps one of the most convincing of the channel's seasons in the form of the Age of Glamour: a look at the inter-war period made up mainly of cheap but adequate documentaries. There was very little archive produced for this season, which is a shame. We got a single PG Wodehouse play. Speaking of plays, the now traditional clump of biopics depicting the lives of tortured performers came in November (the nation yawned). The best season of the lot: the Alan Bennett season, was shared with BBC2, and was a bit of a mess on a scheduling perspective but an admirable piece of archive raiding. There could probably have been more stuff aired beyond the Talking Heads but I'm not going to complain about that; this was the one season with some real content. The year concluded with an Orson Welles season of which the only things of remote interest (beyond the obligatory Arenas again) were the Sketchbook shorts; the films on offer were all regulars to our screens (we were spared a third showing of Lady from Shanghai but got our second Citizen Kane in a year, plus, as with Pinter, a film that wasn't even by Welles). The only remotely novel film we got to see was Macbeth and that wasn't on BBC4 but rather BBC2. Here perhaps we see some of the problem. B4 used to have The Thick of It, for instance. It used to have the first showing of QI. Both have been poached by BBC2 (and the latter subsequently poached again by BBC1; it must surely be cooked by now). Maybe the people at B4 think their only secure means of programming is through the commissioning of material as part of themed seasons. I don't have a problem with seasons, so long as the content is some good and so long as they don't interfere (as they so often do) with the scheduling of non-thematic programming. But BBC4's seasons have not, on the whole, had much in the way of good content. At times, the material has even been rather embarrassing, with a distinct whiff of BBC3 (or more often UKTV). I have said it before and I will say it again: BBC4's greatest achievements are from the archive. Documentaries should be its second string. If only they'd learn this simple lesson.

ITV 3
I3 is, increasingly, the Murder Mystery Channel. Odd, therefore, that there's still no sign of Murder, Mystery & Suspense. I miss the days when it was all Robin Hood and Rumpole of the Bailey. Now it's all Poirot and Wexford. Shame. I always had the hope that this would be the ITV's BBC4.

Sky 3
A shortlived attempt to go for a female audience was followed by a shortlived attempt to act as a shopwindow for the rest of Sky. And yet the content of the channel remains oddly unchanged. It's a digital mess out there.

UKTV Yesterday
The channel formerly known as UK History has never been rubbish. Five years ago it was knocking out the Walden Lectures which was enough to save it a place in posterity. It is, like any other UKTV channel, a vestibule for repeats from the BBC, and occasionally from elsewhere. This year we got A Very British Coup and Porterhouse Blue from C4, for instance. Those are dramas rather than history, demonstrating the channel's move away from its original brief. I got particularly excited last month when it started to repeat Dennis Potter's Lipstick on Your Collar. Alas, Yesterday is only on Freeview for a brief window, and Lipstick... did not fit into that window on account of being by Dennis Potter and hence being too mucky. Perhaps as well, as apparently it was butchered to buggery, as it were, so to speak, in order to fit the channel's worship of the hourly schedule. Walden was also butchered, way back when, to fit a half hour BBC programme into a half hour commercial spot (plus ads). Lipstick... was C4 though, like Coup and Porterhouse. So doubtless they were butchered too. I must clearly check my recording of Coup to ensure its completeness. There is, of course, no excuse for butchering programming. The sister channel, Dave, seems to be happy to work against the constraints of the hour so why not the more mature Yesterday? Had I been able to see Lipstick... this would be the thing that would annoy me. As it is, I am more vexed by the fact that I wasn't allowed to see it. We used to have UK History all day. Due to the unique way in which Freeview is funded, this channel now timeshares with Virgin1+1 and Babestation. It is because of those channels, neither of them really worthwhile, that I was not allowed to see Lipstick on Your Collar. Digital TV is a fucking joke.

Channel 4+1
Timeshift: a brilliant innovation or a waste of bandwidth? C4+1 has been at the centre of two controversies this year relating to the "great shift" that saw C5 swap multiplexes and Bi 302 die. Let's be right about this though: In the beginning of digital, each of the five analogue broadcasters (and S4C) got given half a multiplex each. C5 sold their share to S4C, so bollocks to them. ITV bought out S4C, so bollocks to S4C too. The BBC bought a further one and a half multiplexes while the sold off technical arm of the BBC bought up the rest. So, the BBC had two multiplexes, I1 had one and a half, and C4 had half. Alas, Ofcom interfered, redesignating the roles of the multiplexes, and for some reason the owners went along with this, with the exception of C4 who have consistently told Ofcom, in as polite a way as possible, to fuck off. So C5 was forced to squeeze into the ITV's main space, BBC were forced to relinquish one of their multiplexes to a HD white elephant, and C4 remains boldly in charge of itself. Ofcom suggested to the BBC that it might nick some of C4's space to maintain 302. Sensing C4's rage, the BBC chose not to bother. Good for C4. It's their bandwidth. Let them fill it with what they like. Good for them. If only the rest had as much conviction.

More4
Blah blah Grand Designs blah blah. M4 did not do as well this year as in the past. In part it is doubtless a victim of C4's financial woes which saw the end of More4 News (not that I ever watched it). In richer times M4 might be great. In poorer times it could be great too: Father Ted seems a little lonely with only Black Books and the IT Crowd for company. Surely something older and more interesting might be dug out. In the meantime M4's best feature is probably the True Stories documentary strand.

Film4
Still knocking out lots of Bergman and the odd bit of Tarkovsky, so good for them. Even they are regularly repeated. Does anyone watch F4? Maybe when something new comes along? Still, F4 is a good thing, even if everything is rather familiar.

QVC
Still going. Aw.

4Music
Still showing scantily clad women throughout the day to masturbating teenage boys.

Dave
BBC2+1yr.

Virgin 1
More Star Trek than anyone could possibly want. V1 is a parody of early '90s Sky, not least for its sex programming of a later evening. Still, the occasional film has been known to crop up among repeats of The Outer Limits and X-Files. Is V1 aimed at geeks?

VIVA
This year TMF was rebranded VIVA which sounds like a women's magazine. It is virtually indistinguishable from TMF except that it shows even less videos and even more rubbish films and crap. Still functions, just about, as an alternative to 4Music when 4Music is showing boybands.

Ideal World
Also still going. Aw.

bid tv
Also still going. Ew.

ITV 4
I've always had a bit of a soft spot for I4. It started well, with some good films, including a spaghetti western season. It's shown Space 1999, Dangerman, and The Prisoner, which is a pretty good corner to hold. It's got the World Rally Championship and one of the bodies of Darts. And now it's also got Joss "Buffy" Whedon's Dollhouse. I4 is the acceptable surface of the ITV.

Dave ja vu
It's a good name.

E4
E4+1
What are Friends for? They're for hammocking at times of need. Other than that it's probably fair to say that E4 has no purpose. But as Friends makes up about 98% of E4, it doesn't seem to matter. Odd place.

Fiver
It's rubbish, except for the very occasional film that you've seen before.

Five USA
Gained an A this year, for no good reason. It is not as rubbish as Five Life. It has the better pick (or rather the same pick, but more discerning) of films, and some repeats of House.

The Big Deal
I have not seen this. It's an interactive quiz channel. Good to see they're still going.

ITV2+1
Of all the channels... This is still essentially a holding place for a prospective future ITV channel (most likely ITV1+1) having assumed the position after Rawlpluggate and the death of ITVPlay.

Virgin 1+1
Sometimes timeshare seems a little too ostentatious.

Create and Craft
Sister channel to Ideal World. I'm still amazed that these things are profitable.

price-drop tv
Seriously, who is keeping this shit in business? This could be a proper TV channel. This could be 302!

Quest
The latest of the bit rubbish channels that hang out in that bottom corner of the RT. It has TJ Hooker. That's probably all you need to know.

Super Casino
Late night gambling bullshit.

Rocks & Co.
More opportunities to buy.

National Lottery Xtra
Early morning oddity. The Wikipedia says "Programming includes content from winners of the jackpot and National Lottery Good Causes projects as well as behind the scenes footage on how the National Lottery is operated." Sounds like something to get up for.

CBBC Channel
CBeebies
I still think there should be more old stuff. I still think that old stuff is just as acceptable to children as new stuff and also gives us all a common ground. It's nice to exchange notes on Trumpton. Still, In the Night Garden is a beautiful thing. The Sarah Jane Adventures are flawed but still quite good.

CITV
Tackier than the BBC, relying more on US advert-cartoon imports, but the Harry Hill thing was of interest. Again, more repeats would be lovely.

BBC News
You're better off with Radio 5.

BBC Parliament
Gave us an Election Rerun and an old episode of Question Time this year, not to mention fun like the Live Commons Speaker Election. Even without the novelty, it is worth it for the Select Committees.

Sky News
Sky Sports News
The news being shouted.

CNN International
The news from an American perspective. The Herald Tribune for television.

RT: Russia Today
As above but Russia. The Cold War lives on.

Community Channel
The Lifeline channel, effectively. On its last legs and dead the other side of switchover.

Teachers' TV
Back to four hours a day, though I've no idea what it's selling these days.

Smile TV 2/3
Babestation 1/2
Partyland
Tease Me TV
Soft porn telethons. It's public service broadcasting of a kind...

Teletext
Effectively dead, having given up all pretense to be a news service and now solely concerned with flogging holidays and the like.

BBCi (teletext element)
Ceefax without the cachet.

Sky Text
Can't say I use it. Because I don't.

BBCi (televisual elements)
Pity 302 for without it BBCi is neutered which is mad. Yes, this year we were reduced to only one stream of red button. No more interactive quizzes for us. No more DVD commentaries (though I think they only ever did that with Amores Perros). No more coverage of two tables of snooker, or coverage of more than one minor-interest sport. No more TMS scorecard. Nobody else seems to give a toss, but I can't help but think that this is the worst thing to have happened to television since the Broadcasting Act 1990. That is not to say that it is as bad a thing as the Broadcasting Act 1990. The Broadcasting Act 1990 will take some beating. But it is a bad thing all the same. Just because the Nazis were bad doesn't mean that Johnny down the road can't be bad too. He just lacks the resources. It's a shame, because BBCi was great, be it Glastonbury or the Formula 1 coverage, or more elaborate fun and games. It was, let's be clear, two extra channels of BBC content. Now it is only one extra channel of BBC content. And it still needs listings, even if there's only one.

BBC Radio 1
Dead to me.

BBC Radio 1Xtra
Not really invited to this party.

BBC Radio 2
Now Wogan is gone and Mayo has arrived and I really don't understand what it's for. But it seems to steam along without me understanding what it's for, so it shows what I know.

BBC Radio 3
Knocked out some good drama this year, but then it always has. What it lacks now is some of the musical output of the past. It is definitely not as good as it was. Still, it's a good thing all the same.

BBC Radio 4 (FM version)
Three words alone make the licence fee worthwhile: In Our Time. Yet R4 has even more to offer us that Melvyn and his hair. There's the comedy, chiefly. There's the drama which is sometimes rather good. There's the news coverage, not least Today, PM and The World at One. And there is the documentary material. R4 is, let us be quite clear about it, a brilliant brilliant thing, even if it is occasionally all a bit poncy and middle class; all a bit Archers and Desert Island Discs. R4 is a special place.

BBC Radio 5 Live
R4 may be a special place, just as a village green is a special place. But so is the local pub. And so is Radio 5. Oh, glorious glorious Radio 5. This year something terrible has happened to Radio 5: in the last month Simon Mayo left to become a DJ again. The idiot. Can Radio 5 ever recover from this tragedy? Let us hope so. Drive remains in place, fronted by the brilliant Peter Allen. Mayo is to be replaced by two programmes: one with Gabby Logan and the other with Richard Bacon. I like Richard Bacon. I think he's a decent presenter. I trust he will be a sound replacement for Mayo. I know not everyone agrees, but not everyone thought Mayo was a wise choice before a certain September proved otherwise. Bacon is good and I wish him look. I wish Logan luck too. Let us hope that the brilliance of R5 continues into Salford.

BBC Radio 5 Live Sports Extra
To all intents and purposes, as far as we are concerned, this is Radio 4 LW. But R4LW is not on Freeview. So this gets to hog the points instead. Next year, the Ration Book becomes more honest and more straightforward. All programming will be counted, and all sources properly defined. If I get if from LW it gets accounted as LW. If I get it from the iPlayer it goes in the book as being on the iPlayer. News programming is allowed for the first time, which will be a great source of points for R5, while R5SE will inevitably lose out to my pocket wireless and the wonders of amplitude modulation.

BBC 6 Music
I find this almost indistinguishable from Radio 2. I'm still not really sure what the point of it is. Except for Adam and Joe, and now even they've gone on hiatus.

BBC Radio 7
In the future, BBC7 will have no reason to exist. It will be replaced by the BBC Archive. Until that eventuality it provides an inconvenient glimpse of R4 passed.

BBC Asian Network
Community radio. What bits I've heard have been ok.

BBC World Service (English language European service)
Much ignored, but really rather good. The first port of call for breaking news of an international bent. It now properly incorporates the BBC radio text functions and the screensaver, which is an incentive it lacked before.

The Hits Radio
Smash Hits
Kiss 100
Heat
Magic 105.4
Q
102.2 Smooth Radio
Kerrang!
talkSPORT
Premier Christian Radio
Absolute Radio
Heart 106.2
The rest is commercial radio, and nobody listens to that anymore, surely. We have Spotify now.

Well, as the dwindling length of the above channel reports denotes, it is getting late and I really ought to publish this and move on with the rest of the year. I have a positive feeling about 2010 because I'm a hopeless optimist. The most important question probably has to be "Will the new Doctor Who be any good?" I might consider that a bit more deeply before the month is out. For now I shall disappear quietly into the snow and have a period of hibernation. I will return in February (if not before) with a completed January scorecard and all the rations you can eat. Until then...